UPDATE 2022-june-04: This is an old entry in my blog and the channel Machinima closed down and deleted all their videos. So I have updated this entry with mirrors of the embedded videos and a link to Internet Archive at the bottom. Otherwise it's the same.
Have you noticed, that when a new piece of anything exists, some people, who I really love, will find a way to use it in a creative way, or just be creative with it, or combine this new thing with that old thing? This video is an example, it is a video-capture of two people playing Halo, nothing unusual about that. But wait, suddenly they are talking and acting!
Clip is after the jump (Read more that is).
They have actually used the Halo game to make a short movie about a father and son! Ingenious! It really cuts down on props and stuff too, and you can get an enormous audience using YouTube.
This makes me feel warm and tingly for the world we live in, too se that there are creative and funny people in it. That right there equals hope! I love it, you go watch it now. :)
Halo 3: The Bag Boy
See, wasn't that cool? I can think of a lot of things you could do using this simple technology: plays, skits/humor, politcal campaining, teaching, entire feature movies. Way cool!
Machinima
If you visit the URL in the movie machinima.com you will find a community of aspiring filmmakers using videogames to make movies. They combine the words machine and cinema to machinima.
The clever thing, that someone realised years ago, is that a game, as they are made today, contains characters (actors), environments, sound effects and special effects. It all started in 1996 with the game Quake and it lead to an explosion of movies.
If you would like to know more about how to do movies like this, check out this section on their site Machinima 101 here. Also there is a a videos (made inside a game of cource), that explains what Machinima is, What is Machinima (video).
Also, there is a Wikipedia article about this: Machinima (Wikipedia)
Even more interesting, below is the original "Diary of a Camper" from 1996 that started it all, they are using a person in the game (Quake) that is dead, therefore he can fly around (a feature in this particular game), this is how they get a "camera", nifty! The lines the actors speak are done using the talk function in the game, this means chat, so no voice overs, not so nifty, but hey, this was a first attempt! They "lines" they speak are displayed at the top. Not very many, but they are there.
Diary of a camper was made 12 years ago in 1996, the video "Halo 3: The Bag Boy" was made 2008, imagine 10 years from now?
Addition 2022-june-04: Internet archive has saved the video Diary of a camper here: https://archive.org/details/DiaryOfACamper